CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It's called The Forgotten Triangle, a sparsely populated no-man's-land on the edge of Cleveland's Kinsman neighborhood where the few remaining residents joke that the population doubles at night, when outsiders come to dump garbage, debris and tires.

It is in this most unlikely of places, on roughly an acre of land that itself had become an illegal dump, that three childhood friends came to form a business that is, as co-founder Keymah Durden says, more a "mission to transform the city of Cleveland."

They started a farm.

Their goal: to produce healthy, tasty vegetables, farm-raised tilapia fish and jobs for inner-city residents the economy has passed by.

"The big story here is that Cleveland is emerging as a real leader in urban agriculture," said Randell McShepard, 47, another co-founder and vice president of public affairs for RPM International Inc., the Medina-based coatings and sealants conglomerate. "I think that this kind of facility is one of the last, best chances that we have to help low-skilled workers find employment opportunities.

"I think that in the next year's time frame, we could easily employ 20 to 30 people," added McShepard, who co-founded PolicyBridge, a public policy think tank, and was recently named 2011 Black Professional of the Year by the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation.

McShepard and his childhood friends call their new business the Rid-All Green Partnership, a name they borrowed from co-founder Damien Forshe's environmentally safe exterminating company.

Though life took them in different directions, the friendships they forged growing up in Cleveland's Lee Miles neighborhood brought them back together to work on what they describe as the project of a lifetime -- creating a thriving urban farm at East 81st Street and Otter Avenue.

"They have a lot of business experience," said Will Allen, whose Growing Power Inc.'s urban farms have brought healthy food to thousands of people in Milwaukee and Chicago, attracting national attention, including praise from first lady Michelle Obama in her fight against childhood obesity.

"They really work well together as a team," said Allen, who last year was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. "That serves them well."

Over the last few years, Allen and his staff trained the Rid-All founders in the techniques of urban farming and helped them develop a business model. He's also tapped them to be one of Growing Power's 15 regional urban farming training centers, a responsibility that should help the group develop business relationships in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Allen praised the group's creativity. They've published a series of "Brink City -- Green in the Ghetto" comic books, with a hip-hop twist and superheroes who fight environmental injustices, and distributed them to local students. The comics became a play that will open at Karamu House on Jan. 14.

Allen said the big challenge for Rid-All, as with all urban farms, is to develop a large enough support and distribution network to allow the farm to make money year round and get its food on the tables in homes that need it.

Since summer, Rid-All has been harvesting 150 to 200 pounds of vegetables a week that have been distributed in the community by Sirna & Sons, most notably to St. Vincent Charity Medical Center. Depending on the season, they're growing corn, tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, peppers, celery, collard greens, kale, broccoli, spinach and herbs such as sweet basil, thyme and oregano.

And they're talking to stores and restaurants to extend their reach in the area.

The group has moved quickly since signing a long-term lease on the property in August 2010. They've built a composting operation that puts to use more than four thousand pounds of food waste collected every week from stores and restaurants, four greenhouses with nearly 7,000 square feet of space to grow fresh, organic produce, and a fish farm with nearly 3,000 tilapia.

They recently learned that Timothy Tramble, executive director of the nonprofit Burten, Bell, Carr Development Inc., is securing them a little more than an acre across the street, enough land for a 6,000-square-foot greenhouse with training classrooms and a kitchen.

Rid-All Green PartnershipA rendering of the campus that the co-founders of the Rid-All Green Partnership hope to create in Cleveland's Kinsman neighborhood. Today, the urban farm has four greenhouses. The group would like to add a 6,000 square-foot greenhouse with classrooms and a kitchen, shown at the bottom of the rendering, sometime next year.

The Rid-All farm is the centerpiece of a 23-acre Urban Agriculture Innovation Zone being developed by Tramble's community development organization. Rid-All and the Ohio State University Extension are the first two tenants.

"We are very proud of Rid-All," Tramble said. "They have been our biggest promotional tool for attracting other agriculture entrepreneurs and raising funds."

"I probably get five calls a week from people who have ideas that they want our help to implement," Tramble added. "Most don't follow through after the initial technical assistance we provide."

The Rid-All partners, on the other hand, were out moving dirt on the day their property lease was granted, Tramble said. By February, they had assembled their first greenhouse, and a few months later they began raising fish and growing vegetables inside it.

"It's almost time to have a fish fry," joked Forshe, 43, as he pulled a net of fish from one of the four large tanks. He points out that the largest tilapia is about a pound and will be ready for sale early next year.

The fish are growing nicely in the aquaponic system that cleans and recirculates water between the fish tanks and vegetables growing on a roof.

"The fish [waste] fertilizes the plants, and the plants put nutrients into the water to make the fish healthy," Forshe explained. He plucks a ripe, juicy Roma tomato as proof that the system works.

Outside a greenhouse, Durden said it's the composting system that will be a key to success for the operation. "We're growing our own soil," said Durden, 46, a mechancial engineer whose first passion was his former chain of vegetarian soul food restaurants.

"Yesterday, we picked up 2,000 pounds of food waste," Forshe added. "This food would have gone into a landfill."

The men expect the soil they "grow" through a several-step process to be used at Rid-All's farm, as well as at other commercial operations, community gardens and homes. It's especially valuable for greenhouses, rooftop gardens and in city neighborhoods where people might worry about soil contamination.

"You don't have to dig in the ground," Durden said. "It's bug free. It's highly nutritious and it causes the plants to really grow strong and really grow fast."

The compost also acts as a heat source for the greenhouses during the winter. On one recent sunny day, the temperature was about 50 degrees outside, but 140 degrees inside one of the glass-enclosed greenhouses heated by sunlight and compost piles. (Compost produces heat asorganic material breaks down. Heat inside the piles can easily reach 160 degrees depending on the size of the pile, its moisture content, and aeration.)

Though the three friends have staked their claim in one of the most isolated neighborhoods in Cleveland, The Forgotten Triangle, those who know them say they understand their success is tied to those around them.

"Their heart is 100 percent in this," said Kim Foreman, director of outreach and education for Environmental Health Watch. "I like that they're trying to develop people as well as jobs."

Foreman has worked with Forshe for more than 10 years. Her group is working with Rid-All and the Buckeye Area Development Corp. to develop community and residential gardens in the Buckeye neighborhood. The program, funded with $106,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Saint Luke's Foundation, will be unveiled early next year.

Rid-All solar stationWorkers at the Rid-All urban farm in Cleveland had planned on building their fourth greenhouse on Saturday Nov. 19, but opted to begin work on a 1,000-watt solar station instead. "'Keep it moving,' that's our motto," sad Rid-All co-founder Damien Forshe. In this video, Forshe talks about getting off the electrical grid. Dan Weaver, owner of Windsor Greenhouse in Ashtabula County, talks about building greenhouses for Rid-All. And Tim Lewis of Green In The Ghetto, a Rid-All partner, talks about educating students about urban farming and eating healthy.

"I think they've got a really great model," Foreman said of Rid-All. "They're really about the community. When you're on the ground, and you're in people's homes and trying to get them to understand how serious this is, you can't just be about your business."

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